Yahoo, the once and perhaps future king has made several major announcements recently. With the early January purchase of search engine technology firm Inktomi, Yahoo acquired it’s own search engine, moving away from the live-edited listings it became famous for. Eight days ago, Yahoo announced the hiring of Tim Cadogan, Overture’s VP of search technology. Today, Yahoo and Overture announced a deal that will increase revenues for Overture by an estimated 10% while offering Yahoo a feature that closely resembles Google’s AdWords program. Yahoo is clearly trying to make up ground lost to Google while planning for a future based on increasing revenues from paid-advertising.

The purchase of Inktomi, which is expected to be finalized at the end of March, brings a real spider-based search engine to Yahoo. Previously Yahoo used live-editors to read and rank sites, though in recent months it has presented results drawn directly from the Google database. Yahoo insisted on a non-exclusive agreement with Google, allowing it to introduce listings drawn from other sources. The hiring of Tim Cadogan telegraphs Yahoo’s move towards paid-placement listings, as Mr. Cadogan was instrumental in establishing Overture’s highly successful bid-per-click auction system. Today’s announcement offers a new layer of evidence that Yahoo is serious about returning to the status of top search tool. Yahoo will be presenting multi-colored box-type advertisements on the right-hand side of search results. These box-type advertisements closely resemble Google’s highly successful AdWords program but are drawn from Overture’s top listings. Yahoo is also prompting users to establish Overture accounts by providing several links to Overture. The weight of these moves may be the signal for a merger in the long-term works.

Pay for Placement May Become More Prevalent
A white paper called "Search Engines: Evolution and Diffusion" noted that for a search engine to be successful enough to break the $200 million barrier it will have to introduce a pay-for-placement scheme. This white paper was created in response to the ever-growing cost for search engines of indexing the Internet. With the ever-increasing requirement for advanced search techniques and with the Internet growing at such a rapid rate, larger search engines will find it hard to keep offering free indexing.

Obviously not every search engine is concerned about breaking a $200 million dollar income barrier, however, it does spell a glum future for struggling businesses that will want to create a profitable online presence in the future.

ESPN Now Uses Overture
In another move to increase the visibility its paid listings, Overture signed an exclusive two-year agreement with ESPN.com to show its paid results on the popular web site. This comes after another addition was made to Overture's network in December; CNN.

As an added note of interest a CNet article notes that "Wall Street analysts are concerned about Overture's reliance on its portal partners." To back this up, the article notes that as of October 2002, Yahoo and MSN accounted for 63% of Overture's income. Dependency on giants such as these may prove extremely dangerous in the long run. It might not be long until Overture has no choice but to merge with Yahoo! or another major power.

Green is good for Montreal artificial turf maker FieldTurf. As the only synthetic grass manufacturer sanctioned by FIFA, and the growing choice amongst NFL and MLB teams, FieldTurf is poised to become the leader the world of artificial sports playing surfaces.

FieldTurf started in the sport surfacing industry in 1988 with the manufacture of NovaCourt, a synthetic grass for tennis courts and NovaTee, a synthetic surface used to minimize wear and tear around golf practice tees under the name SynTenni Co. Based on a need to replicate real grass with these installations, the company began developing synthetic turf surfaces for other sports installations including soccer, lacrosse, football and baseball. NovaTee was re-engineered as a playing surface for contact sports FieldTurf replicates a natural grass surface, but offers the durability and cost benefits of synthetic fields. FieldTurf is a safe alternative, resulting in a documented reduction of sports injuries. The sand and rubber infill system is the biggest technical development that the sport surfacing industry has seen in the last twenty-five years. This patented technology sets FieldTurf apart from all other sports surfaces and makes them one of the most interesting Canadian firms to watch grow.

Check out Field Turf's web site at www.fieldturf.com

Ever been tempted to add your competition's name to the Meta tags on your web site? Well we would not recommend it. Although this tactic just might get you listed under your competition's name on a search engine, you may find yourself pleading your case in court.

For a long time now it has been common knowledge within the SEO industry that using competitor's trademarked names within the keyword Meta tag on a web site would land you in hot water (see previous search engine case law). Now it seems that even adding the actual name of a competitor (i.e. Robert Franklin) may lead to a court date. In Milwaukee, a well-known (Gerald P. Boyle) lawyer has been the target of a Meta-tag marketing trick whereby a (no longer) lesser-known lawyer (John Cabaniss) has obtained a #1 placement on Google under his competitor's actual name. Search "Gerald P. Boyle". Mr. Boyle is now suing John Cabaniss for "invasion of privacy and attempting to steal away business."

Will this hold up in court? We believe so, simply because the pages that are listed #1 and 2 not only have Mr. Boyle's name in the Meta tags but the pages actually reference cases lost by Mr. Boyle.

"WEB spiders could be deployed against online scammers following news the securities regulator and academic researchers have combined in a $1 million online anti-fraud project.

The joint research project between the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, the Capital Markets Cooperative Research Centre, the University of Sydney and Macquarie University would see automated search engines crawling the web for scam sites.

The spiders will trawl the web looking for suspicious sites, which will then be followed up by ASIC staff.

The project - due to be completed by August - brings together technology and linguistics specialists to make it easier for ASIC to search the web and assess potential online frauds.

It adds to Australia's arsenal of online law enforcement tools, with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission already conducting manual sweeps of the internet." (news.com.au - see article)